The content of this book is absolutely thrilling for me. However, the middle of the plot-line became, after about 100 pages or so, much too dense for my liking. I found myself very intrigued in the first 1/3 of the book, but my inspiration and excitement waned after I realized it might just be one long lecture on the history of philosophy after all. Still, the underlying story line of Sophie and the world in which she lives, not to mention the ending, are fun and enticing enough to keep reading. Worth the pages. ( )

This book is a summary of Western Philosophy starting at the Early Greek Philosophers (let's say Pre-Socrates) and ending with the modern philosophers. Luckily, this book reads mostly like a novel.

I really liked the beginning of the book. I happen to have had a class on Pre-Socratic philosophy, as part of my Greek lessons, and I think that after a year I got the vision of Heraklitus cum suis clear. So it was most interesting to read about it in this book.

In this part it still is a story you're reading.

After Socrates, Plato and Aristotle it's only a short way to 'modern' philosophy, starting at Descartes. (I also happen to have had a class on the 'philosophy and introduction of ethics' where the professor just couldn't shut up about Descartes, and after very few words on Kant and Nietzsche moved on to Freud, another person he really liked to talk about) But at some point during the (I think it's was the 19th century philosophers) I got lost. As the philosophy becomes weirder (as in like 'what if we're not real, but just live in the imagination of someone else'), the story also takes a turn down that path, and it turns barely understandable. The sense of reading a novel gets lost as well. It left me confused. (Though I really liked the first part) ( )

I had had my share of ancient and modern philosophers, I thought. Some parts of the book were more or less familiar to me. BUT, when the ancient philosophy was left behind, I also had to read and re-read passages, for they were not clear to me.I liked the book, for its originality: a philosopher explaining things to a young girl, very inventive. It is not a simple read though. I'll give it a try again soon, this is the kind of book I can read multiple times and still find new things in it. ( )

Very entertaining and informative. How many things can you say that about? A good starting point on Philosophy. I will never make a good philosopher because I don't like analyzing every single thought, action, process, etc. that comes along. But I would like to think with fewer preconceived ideas and notions. ( )

As philoso-narrative, "Sophie's World" is a world above "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" but a universe below "The Magic Mountain." In my view, literate readers would do better to try Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy," which is shorter on magic but longer on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly skepticism.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irrestistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the pilosophy she is learning--but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.… (more)